


shellshock

by Goldmonger



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Light Angst, Multi, i love that that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:18:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7417552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott has a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shellshock

**Author's Note:**

> "For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother."
> 
> \- Homer, The Odyssey
> 
>  
> 
> ***

There was something intrinsically horrific about the canyon of semi-awareness that bridged sleep and consciousness. Scott thought it was like swimming ten thousand leagues under the sea, drifting along peacefully, only to come to the jolting realisation that he was underwater without breathing apparatus, and the pressure was crushing his skull, and was that a pair of glowing eyes he just saw in the darkness?

He wasn’t a stranger to nightmares. He remembered being six years old, the day he said goodbye to his brother as he shipped out to Vietnam. Much more clearly he recalled later that night, awakening with a scream, having dreamed of Alex being blown apart by a landmine. His father had refused to let him watch Cronkite’s reports on TV after that, no matter how he cried and insisted he needed to know details of the war – just in case it was true. Alex had come home, of course, whole and hearty and prepared to die much in the same way Scott had feared less than a decade later.

He knew it was stupid, rocking in a corner like some schizo with sweat beading at his hairline, the dull ache of blooming bruises on his shins and hip where he’d banged them jumping out of bed. He was ambling around blind, after all; he couldn’t remember if he’d left his sunglasses on the chest of drawers across the room or in his bedside locker, and so left his bandages on. They were his security in case his eyelids fluttered in the night, keeping them shut tight. For him now, the world was always going to be either black as pitch or red as blood.

He had dreamed of Apocalypse, and the planet being torn in half. He’d seen Jean on fire, writhing in pain; the professor with his head split open like a melon, Magneto scrabbling around in his spaghetti-like brains looking for something – he still didn’t know what; the Archangel with his silver wings, falling from the sky like a comet, Kurt waiting below him with his arms open as though ready to catch him; Storm with a lightning bolt held in her hand like a dagger, standing over him with no face. He’d died so many times in his dreams, but this was different – he’d felt the lightning go through him, inside him, had felt his heart sizzle and stutter to a halt. He had woken with it thumping, however, erratic and desperate to escape his ribcage.

And he had dreamed of Alex, falling away from him with his hand outstretched and his mouth open in a silent scream. Scott had run and run, and never reached him, his brother fading into a pinprick in the distance as his legs pumped uselessly after him.

The air was cool on his damp skin, calming, but his breathing was still that of a marathoner. He was focusing on bringing it under control when a voice sounded behind him.

“Scott?”

He almost leaped out of his skin, and swore profusely, his heart once again hammering away.

“Sorry,” came a frantic whisper, and Scott recognised Kurt’s stilted accent. He felt the creak of the floorboards as he sat beside him, and only barely flinched when something cold touched his hand.

“Your glasses. They were in the bathroom.”

“Th-thanks,” muttered Scott, and took them shakily, keeping his eyes squeezed shut as he unwrapped the bandages and slid them on. When he opened his eyes he realised he had skittered right across the room and ended up by the window, moonlight casting long shadows and making the room seem far bigger than it really was. Kurt was next to him in pyjama bottoms and a jersey, smiling uncertainly under a ruffled fringe.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” lied Scott, and turned back to the window. The eerie light and lack of a breeze made the lawn outside look like the setting for a horror film.

“It’s just. I heard you cry out in your sleep.”

“Well I’m fine now,” Scott said crossly, drawing his knees up to his chin. He was digging bloody crescents into his arms with his fingernails, and he tried to relax his hands. It was difficult, like he’d been electrocuted.

“You made a lot of noise getting out of bed to come to the window,” said Kurt pointedly. Scott wanted to hit him. Couldn’t a man have his nervous breakdown in privacy anymore?

“I said I’m fine,” he retorted through gritted teeth, and determinedly avoided Kurt’s gaze. They sat in silence for another few minutes, and Scott was about to tell him to go back to bed in an even less hospitable tone when Kurt spoke.

“I had bad nightmares after we fought Apocalypse, you know. I mean right after.”

Scott kept his mouth shut, his shoulders slightly hunched.

“I would dream all sorts of things,” Kurt continued mildly. “I dreamed the man with the claws that we freed at Alkali Lake diced us into little tiny pieces. I dreamed Apocalypse ate us, one by one, like the titan Kronos ate his children. I dreamed you all dying, even Jubilee who wasn’t in Cairo then, leaving me all alone – the only mutant left in the world, and people with pitchforks came and killed me slowly.”

Scott didn’t say anything for a while, and Kurt scratched his nose absently. Somewhere an owl hooted.

“I dreamed I couldn’t get to my brother in time,” said Scott softly. “I mean, I dream about us dying all the time too, but I wake up and I know it’s not true. But that dream – I hate waking up afterwards because there’s a moment, where I remember that we beat Apocalypse, and I feel so relieved I get light-headed. Then I remember Alex, how I didn’t get to save him. That one’s always true, and it always hits me like a ton of bricks.”

Scott felt something hot and wet trickle down his cheek, and wiped it away hurriedly. His tears were of a temperature high enough to be scalding now, leaving his flesh tender and pink where they fell. It made him feel like his own body was punishing him, just another _fuck you_ from his mutation.

“I never said it,” said Kurt, his voice close to being inaudible, “but I am sorry about him. About Alex.”

“Me too,” said Scott, a lump rising in his throat. “Every single day.”

There were a few moments where they simply sat in each other’s company, comfortably wordless, the sombre black and white night tinted red from behind Scott’s lenses. Kurt’s tail had curled around him to rest on Scott’s other side, twitching every so often like a cat’s. At every one of his sniffles or a half-swallowed sob, the tail would slither closer. Scott wondered if Kurt even knew he was doing it, when the tail was suddenly in his lap. It was one of his many quirks, like how Jubilee compulsively made tea whenever anyone was upset, or Peter babbled nearly incomprehensibly to fill awkward silences.

Scott couldn’t restrain a watery grin at the thought, and let some of the tension leak out of him. His people were all right, he thought, as the first twittering of the birds heralding the dawn began. Maybe losing Alex and his other life _was_ like suffocating under the crushing weight of the entire ocean, but maybe there were others there with him too, holding out scuba masks and oxygen tanks, taking his hands to pull him to the surface. That wasn’t such a desolate image, he told himself, as Kurt yawned, his tail braced around Scott like a seatbelt. Not so desolate after all.


End file.
